Tivoli Offers Free Privacy Software

IBM Corp. subsidiary Tivoli Systems Inc. released a free download Thursday to help enterprises set and manage privacy policies for their customers.

Tivoli Privacy Wizard uses the wizard-style interface to translate a written privacy policy into business rules for sharing data. With the policies in place, software prevents employees from using customer data in a manner inconsistent with published policies or customer requests.

Privacy is becoming an increasingly important concern for enterprises. As technology companies are pushed to find more sources of revenue, they become more likely to sell data to third parties or use the data for internal reason, such as generating sales leads. Conversely, as customer data is more likely to be shared with partners, customers are becoming more sensitive to how data is shared.

Tivoli Privacy Wizard is available for download here. The software exports the business rules into the P3P standard, which was co-developed by Tivoli and is used by Tivoli Privacy Manager.

Yahoo! Inc.’s recent privacy policy change highlighted the concerns of users regarding data sharing. Yahoo! announced it would begin to sell customer information, including email addresses, telephone numbers, and street addresses to third parties and asked customers to examine their settings if they do not want to receive spam. Because Yahoo! offers many consumer services, including instant messaging and retail storefronts, many users may be unaware of how much of their personal data Yahoo! has.

IBM and Tivoli place Thursday’s release in the context of an ongoing initiative to help enterprises manage privacy policy. In November of 2001, IBM announced the formation of the Privacy Management Council, a consortium of companies dedicated to address the privacy needs of the enterprise. The council also helped develop the feature set for Tivoli Privacy Wizard.

With the release of Tivoli Privacy Wizard, IBM also announced that consultancy Ernst & Young LLP had joined the Privacy Management Council. Members already include the US Department of Commerce, Deloitte & Touche, and T. Rowe Price.

About the Author

Chris McConnell is Product and Technology Editor for Enterprise Systems.